Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

correspondence to Old Indian Vedic compounds á-riΩ-ta-ratha “(whose) cart (is) non-
damaged” (as well as the combination á-riΩ-ta-s ratha-s “non-damaged chariot” in the
g-Veda, cf. Avestan a-iriÍta- “non-damaged”), á-riΩ-ta-nemi “having a non-damaged
rim” (áriΩtanemim rátham “a chariot with non-damaged = whole rims of wheels”)
makes it possible to suggest a common Eastern Indo-European prototype of such
privative constructions at the level of meaning. Close semantic correspondences to this
Greek term are found in Slavic (*jarâmo “yoke with a thill for two oxen”, with
unexplained length of *â). In Ossetic ar “thill”, possibly in some other dialects as well 376 ,
the stem was often contaminated with a term for “arm”.
Among specific Indo-Iranian-Greek (or maybe Proto-Eastern Indo-European)
innovative terms, one can mention Old Indian ≈amya- “yoke pin” (in the Íatapatha
Brâhmaˆa), Lahndâ sam “horizontal stick of a yoke which passes under a bullock’s
neck”, Avestan simâ < *sami- “wooden ring around the neck of a horse attached to a
yoke”, Mundzhan sâm “yoke-peg needed to immobilize the neck of an ox”, Vakhan
sam(Íúng) “vertical pegs on the yoke”, samdarÇ “a rope binding together the vertical
pegs on the yoke”, sPn-vPr “yoke” < *sami-bara-, Ossetic saemaen “axle”. 377 The term is
cognate to Greek kãmaj which, besides a general technical meaning “pole” (“vine-
pole, vine-prop”, S 563), also has a special nautical sense of “tiller, helm”, coinciding
with one of the main meanings of Armenian sami-k‘ “yoke pin; tiller, helm”. Although
it has been supposed that the latter might have been an Iranian (Parthian) loanword in
Armenian 378 , the parallel nautical meaning in Greek (characteristic of the other Greek
terms in this semantic field) may point to an earlier Eastern Indo-European transport
term.
376 On Eastern Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian) terms which are considered to be later borrowings from
German, see: Toporov 1980, 69 (cf. there also on Gaulish). Cf. also below on Old Indian ará- “spoke of a
wheel”, which may be connected to the same root.
377 Abaev 1979, III, 64-65; Griunberg 1972, 168, 353; Griunberg and Steblin-Kamenskij 1976, 161, text on
agriculture, sentence 3, 274, fig. 1, 445; Steblin-Kamenskij 1985, 161-163.